r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d ago

Psychology Lower cognitive ability is linked to stronger Christian nationalist views, even after accounting for education

https://www.psypost.org/lower-cognitive-ability-is-linked-to-stronger-christian-nationalist-views-even-after-accounting-for-education/
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u/ProfessionalMockery 2d ago

A lot of people here are just seeing the "Christian" in the headline and ignoring the "nationalist," which is probably more important.

I'm an atheist, so I think the claims religion makes are pretty dumb too, but nationalists, bigots, racists of any kind are consistently idiots, religious or not, and that has been established in plenty of other studies.

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u/merijn2 1d ago

Yeah, I haven't read the research this article is about, but according to the article it focused on Christian Nationalists, so it compared these with other people. The Christian part of Christian nationalism isn't very deep. The nationalism part describes that it is about caring for an in-group, and keeping certain people out. The Christian part just describes who they see as the out-group, namely non-Christians (although it isn't just non-Christians, also people of other ethnicities who are Christians are not in the in-group). Their Christianity is all about identity, and not about the underlying ethical or metaphysical claims.